Amber Greviskes blogs about diabetes. I thought I knew a fair amount about diabetes, but she taught me something I'd never heard before.
Genetics plays a bigger role than was previously thought. It seems that very small babies very often will grow up with higher rates of type 2 diabetes. Doctors have known this but had no explanation for it. Birth size is affected by two genetic regions, and one of these regions is also related to the development of diabetes.
" 'Our study shows that genes are part of the reason why babies born with a lower birth weight are more at risk of type 2 diabetes 50 or 60 years later,' Rachel Freathy, Ph.D., a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bristol, said in a press release. 'It is now important for us to establish how much of the association is due to our genes and how much is due to the environment because this will inform how we target efforts to prevent the disease.' "
http://www.thediabetesblog.com